Contents
- Parents: How did you get the idea to write this book?
- Miscarriage: what to say?
- Why this lack of interest in the difficulties of the first three months of pregnancy?
- What should be put in place so that couples have a better life during these first three months?
- In video: “3 months in silence” | Interview Without Filter of Judith Aquien
Parents: How did you get the idea to write this book?
Judith Aquien : This reflection is based on my own experience. I have experienced a miscarriage. Support was not. I consulted in the same service as women who were going to give birth. The vocabulary used by the teams (even if there were nice people) was very violent. “It’s commonplace, it happens every day. »While the shock is unheard of. Not to mention the feeling of guilt that invades us since miscarriages remain unexplained. We would need gentleness, solicitude to mourn, but this speech is not common. We sometimes find ourselves alone at home to take a medicine and flush the toilet on an embryo …
I was also surprised by the lack of consideration for the second parent, who also loses his parenthood project, who must mourn a happy projection, sometimes long awaited (in the case of a course of assisted reproduction). Keeping the announcement of pregnancy a secret until the first ultrasound is to deny all this experience, to make it unnecessary. It is as if the pregnancy does not begin until three months! This silence also isolates couples from those around them at a time in life when they may need support.
Miscarriage: what to say?
Why this lack of interest in the difficulties of the first three months of pregnancy?
Judith Aquien : Women are expected to be pretty, young and fertile. We infantilize them. Everything about motherhood has to be cute. What leads to the birth of a child concerns the body of women and does not interest many people. It is with big quotes “a matter of good women”! It is comparable to the taboo on the rules, on the clitoris. The history of medicine since Hippocrates is marked by misogyny. Thus, the symptoms of the first trimester, nausea, vomiting, extreme fatigue, are considered as “little ailments” that must be endured without complaining otherwise they may pass for “cozy”, “boring”. It has become a joke between women, a condition that has been internalized, it’s awful. This is how I discovered that many women exhausted by the first trimester were hiding to take a nap on the toilet in the office, or hugging the walls to go throw up after lunch. The first few weeks are trying, and we have very few solutions at our disposal!
Testimony: “I did not dare to announce it too early”
Isabelle, 36, mother of Lucas (11), 12 weeks pregnant
“It’s only been two weeks since I told someone other than my partner, to my colleague (we work in pairs). Even my mother and our children (my oldest and my partner’s daughter) don’t know it! I had this reflex of thinking “we don’t say anything for 3 months because we are not sure that it works”. There is also a bad omen for me to announce it too soon… Despite everything, keeping the secret was difficult. My son told me a while ago “you really ate too much” because my pants don’t close anymore. And then I was smeared, out of breath, very tired. I managed not to carry heavy loads and focus on sitting tasks. It’s paradoxical, because at the same time I didn’t want to be taken “for a little fragile thing”. Maybe with bigger symptoms, I wouldn’t have lasted. And if the pregnancy had stopped, I don’t know how I would have managed, how the children could have understood without having the initial information… In the end, I do not regret anything because now I am in great shape and I passed the ultrasound course. The announcement will be a new moment of celebration. Keeping the information to myself was a way of savoring the news, of benefiting from it before anyone else. “
What should be put in place so that couples have a better life during these first three months?
Judith Aquien : It is up to everyone to decide whether or not they want to break the “secret” about the positive test before the first echo. I would especially not want to add an injunction to couples! Everyone experiences it and takes charge of it in their own way, and some do not want to repeat a “turn of announcement” to their loved ones in the event of miscarriage. But it seems to me that we could have the choice to talk about it without being pressured, especially in professional life. And for that, that the companies arrange the hours, the working conditions during these three months. Women are afraid to announce their pregnancy “for nothing”, in other words to weaken their career and eventually perhaps have a miscarriage. What a double sorrow caused by the discrimination still too often made against pregnant women! There is undoubtedly also work to be done with the new generations, an education to be transmitted on the body of women. So that women are not surprised and that men stop finding it taboo and understand the extent of what their partner is going through. The psychological support for couples in the event of miscarriage or medical termination of pregnancy, which exists, must be more extensive and more visible. a automatic work stoppage should also be provided for by law. It is not for couples to “claim” it. All the healthcare professionals I interviewed recognize a lack in their training and that of their peers on these themes. Not to mention the need for more research on the origins of miscarriages, and remedies for pregnancy symptoms.
Judith Aquien is the author of “Three months in silence-The taboo of the condition of women in early pregnancy”, Ed. Payot, May 2021.
In video: “3 months in silence” | Interview Without Filter of Judith Aquien